Last week I wrote a little about my
frustrated desire to travel, and of a feeling of being stuck at home in suburban
Sakuradai, Tokyo. It got me thinking
about what makes for a good trip. Is it
the golden temples? Is it the mad rush
to see all the sights listed in your guidebook in the few days you have?
I would argue from my own experience that
it is not. It won’t be the golden temples
you remember when you think of your trip abroad. It will be getting lost, and the helpful person
in the street who goes several blocks out of their way to set you in the right
direction. Or it will be realising that
you are sitting on the wrong train with only minutes to spare, and rushing off
in a panic before the doors close. Or it
will be wandering into a restaurant off the beaten track where no one
speaks your language and you have to point to what someone else is eating and
hope for the best.
Thinking of the ten weeks or so I spent some
years ago in south-east Asia, it is moments like that which really stick in my
mind.
Perhaps the clearest memory is of taking a
night-bus from Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand to Bangkok. Despite leaving in the evening and arriving
in the morning, the driver was determined that if he had to stay awake then nobody
else should be allowed to sleep. So he
put on some dreadful Thai tv variety show and turned the volume up
painfully loud. And then left it on all
night. So I arrived in Bangkok the next
morning completely exhausted.
For some reason I was carrying a lot of
bags. One of them was probably full of a
week’s worth of dirty laundry. I wanted
to get off near my hotel, so I left the bus before the final stop. Unfortunately, because I was so tired and had
several bags, I accidentally left one bag on the bus. It contained my passport. I didn’t notice I had left it until I was off
the bus and it had closed its doors and was pulling away. I then realised with panic that it would be
very hard to find the bus and get the bag back if I didn’t do something fast.
So I quickly found a motorbike taxi and
climbed on the back. “Follow that bus!”
I told the driver, and he did, just like in a movie.
I put on the helmet he gave me, but soon
noticed that the strap was broken. It
kept slipping down from my head, and I had to push it back up with one of my
hands. But I was carrying a bag in my
other hand so I couldn’t hold onto the bike.
For a few seconds every time the helmet started to slip, I was hanging
on to the bike with only my legs.
The motorbike was going fast to keep up
with this bus, and the road had bumps and pot-holes. Going over these without properly holding on,
and wearing a helmet that could fall off at any time, I realised that this was
probably the most stupid thing I had ever done in my life. I was having visions of my parents’ surprise
at their son’s death in an idiotic motorbike chase for a lost bag. “He seemed smarter than that,” they were
saying.
At last the bus arrived at the next
stop. The motorbike pulled in behind it,
and I retrieved my bag. I tipped
the driver of the motorbike for not killing me, and went to find a proper car
to take me to my hotel.
What have I been saying? Now I remember all the difficulties of travel
- all the times I have gotten lost, had to pay a bribe to get a document
I had already paid for, been tricked into exchanging money at a terrible rate,
been followed by a sinister man who seemed to hate foreigners, gotten on
the wrong train, been stuck in a heavy downpour, been stuck in the snow in
shoes with holes, had my wallet stolen, found cockroaches in my hotel room, found
a poisonous scorpion sitting in my bed (no, really), seen a large sewer rat
sniffing through the ingredients of a restaurant at which I was eating, had to
argue with taxi drivers not to take me to a gem shop, got sunburned, got
seasick, got food poisoning, been an a minor traffic accident (twice) – I’ve gotten
well rid of my travel longings. Stay
at home. It’s much safer in Sakuradai,
and there’s a nice ramen restaurant around the corner.
Vocabulary:
suburban – of the suburbs, or the outer,
residential areas of a city
off the beaten track – away from areas
usually travelled to; hard to get to
dreadful – terrible; awful
exhausted – extremely tired
a pot-hole – an unrepaired hole in a road
to retrieve – to get back
a bribe – a corrupt payment; money given to
get a favour performed
sinister – evil-looking
a longing – a strong desire
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